In what can only be termed a distress sale, Wadhawan Global Capital, the parent company that ran the troubled housing finance firm DHFL, has sold its insurance arm, DHFL General Insurance, to Sachin Bansal. Sachin Bansal is one of the co-founders of Flipkart which was bought over by the US retail giant Walmart. Bansal, rich from his offloading the stakes in Flipkart, has been building an empire in the fintech space and the company he has floated, BAC Acquisitions, now renamed, Navi Technologies and it is Navi Technologies that has now paid ₹100 crore for 100% of the stake owned by WGC in DHFL General Insurance.
DHFL General Insurance has ₹400 crore in assets under management. The earlier acquisition by Navi Technologies was a micro lending institution, Chaitanya Rural Intermediation Development Services. Sachin Bansal has stated that he intends to invest ₹739 crore in this firm which is an NBFC. He is reportedly keen to enter the banking services too by applying for a licence to the RBI for opening a bank. The combination of a bank, NBFC and now an insurance company will augur well for establishing a strong financial services behemoth. Sachin Bansal has often declared that he wants to leverage technology wherever available in the financial services industry thereby improving the quality of asset management being carried out. With this perspective, he has annexed a technology consulting firm MavenHive recently, with the entire team at MavenHive now working for Bansal’s firm.
The serial entrepreneur has been active as an investor in startups as well, with the funds at his disposal from the Flipkart sale. The companies he has invested in include Bouce, Vogo, IndoStar Finance and Altico Capital.
A larger scale investment he has made is in the ride share company Ola where he has put in ₹650 crore.
Meanwhile Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL), of which the Wadhawans were the promoters is facing insolvency resolution at the National Company Law Tribunal, having run into excessive non-recoverable debts.